What does "ready to grab life by the bread basket" mean?

Question

Keep your hands where we can see em, ready to grab life by the bread
basket. (Source: https://www.amazon.com/Stanley-Classic-Trigger-Mug-Leak-Packable/dp/B08LFP8GRK)

According to dictionaries, a bread basket could mean a stomach or a a major cereal-producing region. But the meaning of this sentence is still unclear. Does this mean to ready to enjoy a life with rich food?

FumbleFingers · Accepted Answer

It's a "mangled metaphor mash-up"1. The writer mistakenly thinks "bread-basket" is a euphemism for genitals, and what he really wanted to say was...

ready to grab life by the balls (dozens if not hundreds of hits in Google Books)

...where I think it's significant that the first (only?) instance of the "mangled" version reported by Google for the Internet at large is in fact OP's example as cited here. It has no currency.

1 Here's a website called mashupamericans mentioning to grab the bull by the balls (where the idiomatic standard for that one is ...by the horns, akin to grasping the nettle firmly).
But I think it's worth saying that the bull/balls version is actually quite common - it's usually a deliberately facetious mash-up which both speaker and audience would recognise as "playing with language"). I don't think we can say that about OP's example, which looks like just a straightforward mistake.

rajah9 · Answer

Ah, what a tangled web we weave, when at first we write ad copy.
Agreeing with @FumbleFingers assessment of a "mangled metaphor mash-up," grab  by the bread basket comes from grab  by the balls.
One is metaphorically grabbing a vigorous and virile beast by its testicles. It will not give up without a fight.
The bread basket is a euphemism for testicles.
An older metaphor is to take the bull by the horns:

to deal with a difficult situation in a very direct way: I took the bull by the horns and confronted him about his mistreatment of the workers.

(Cambridge)
Grabbing a bull by the horns will likely get you gored, as would grabbing a bull by the testicles. By implication, it takes a brave soul.
The ad copy invokes this directly: "Some people take the bull by the horns with one hand tied behind their back." This places the would-be brave soul, who's looking to replace his thermos, in the boots of the Marlboro man.

What does "ready to grab life by the bread basket" mean?

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